April 2005

GDRC's 4th Anniversary GDRC celebrates its fourth anniversary this month! It was four years ago this month, on 25 May 2001, that GDRC was born! We would like to thank all well-wishers and friends for their support and encouragement all these years!! THIS MONTH'S SPOTLIGHT: Disaster Management from GDRC's Programme on Urban Environmental Management "Mitigating the impacts of a disaster also brings the community together" A disaster, such as the recent Indian Ocean Tsunami of December 2004, invariably brings the world community together, in coordinating relief and rehabilitation efforts to assist the affected communities. Lessons learnt in the past few decades clearly show that however widespread a disaster's impact, the key approach in mitigating its negative impacts is better preparing a community - at the loal level, Comunity-based disaster mitigation and management is gaining increasing attention among public and private agencies, How can communities become better aware of therisk and vulnerabilities it faces, and be better prepared? GDRC has been working on these issues, within the overall perspective of urban environmental management. Its compiled resources and outputs are availble at: http://www.gdrc.org/uem/disaster As with all sections of GDRC, contributions, comments and suggestions are always welcome from users and subscribers! Please contact GDRC's Coordinator at - mosaic@gdrc.org FOCUS ON GDRC: LEARNING LESSONS Why GDRC? Recently, the daily average number of visitors to GDRC's website increased dramatically to this month's figure of 3,706 persons per day. Why GDRC? What is the attractiveness of GDRC's info for its users/visitors? GDRC provides short documents that can easily be contextualized/localized to the situation of the user. By a prudent heirarchy of topics and sub-topics, it adds a layer of knowledge to the knowledge already existing with the user. The information available in GDRC does not make you an expert, but it does make you aware of the interconnectedness and multidisciplinarity of issues - helping expand and network on their interested topics. MONTHLY STATISTICS FOR GDRC'S WEBSITE Total hits encountered - 975,764 Total files downloaded - 783,970 Total pages viewed - 315,323 Total web visitors - 114,586 Total KBytes - 7,308,631 Pages per day - Avg. 10,510; Max. 15,101 Visits per day - Avg. 3,819; Max. 5,576 WHAT'S NEW AT GDRC'S WEBSITE? Highlists from new items added to GDRC's programme pages: All GDRC: GDRC's search page was redesigned to enable users to choose between Google, MSN or Yahoo to search the GDRC website. Environmental Decision-Making: Documents - Rio Summit and Principle 10 Oceans, Coasts and Small Islands: GDRC is now a member of the UN Oceans Atlas Urban Environmental Management: Transportation - Sustainable Urban Transport Project Urban Environmental Management: Disaster management links - Groups and networks Urban Heritage and Conservation: GDRC becomes a member of the Asian Academy for Heritage Management (AAHM) NGO Cafe: Kickstart an NGO - Addtional resources were added to 'NGO Credibility' NGO Cafe: Kickstart an NGO - Addtional resources were added to 'NGO Codes of Conduct' Microfinance: Networks - Rural Finance Learning Center Microfinance: Training Programmes - Resources were updated and expanded. Microfinance: Documents - Microcredit and Microfinance Glossary Internet and ICTs: Programme pages were redesigned and updated! ABOUT GDRC MOSAIC The "GDRC Mosaic" is a monthly email newsletter that provides information bites, and summarizes programme activities of GDRC, including new items added to the website. This month, it was sent out to more than 540 subscribers in 83 countries. To subscribe: http://www.gdrc.org/about/newsletter.html To unsubscribe: unsubscribe-mosaic@gdrc.org Comments, suggestions and contributions: info-mosaic@gdrc.org CONTACT ADDRESS: Global Development Research Center 5-13-3-1601, Nakano-cho, Miyakojima-ku, Osaka 534-0027, Japan Tel / Fax: +(81-6) 6925-8005 Emial: info-mosaic@gdrc.org URL: http://www.gdrc.org/ © 2003-2005, GDRC. All rights reserved.